


Balance

by tcheschire



Series: Wasteland Baby [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Medicinal Drug Use, Sasori Probably Wouldn't Like Being Called A Mad Scientist, Sleep Deprivation, but here we are, introspective, mentions of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tcheschire/pseuds/tcheschire
Summary: He can move his puppets with the jerk of a string, but he requires different from himself. If he wants to keep his integrity as an artist, it has to look natural. And so, Sasori practices moving for the first time with his new parts.
Series: Wasteland Baby [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676050
Kudos: 9





	Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Part two of my Sasori Hozier series, Movement. Actually not the first time I've written about Sasori's conversion, but the last time was well before the end of the manga so almost all of it was rendered moot by canon. This one is way less dark than that other one, though, and definitely less explicit.

When Sasori set his foot on the ground, his body flinched out of habit. It was only a mild surprise – though he had been pumping chemicals into his body for days beforehand, and had already gone through the experience of modifying his arms, there was still that base instinct that hadn’t quite been quelled. That very human feeling of _something is wrong, I know I have been injured_.  
  
He pushed an experimental surge of chakra to the sole of the foot – it wasn’t quite the same as nerve endings, not by a long shot, but it served well enough as an echo of what it was like to feel that he could sense the difference in texture of the hardwood floor and the rug. It sufficed.  
  
He held position for a moment, hands braced against the edge of his workbench, and canted his head as he regarded his foot on the ground. He went through a checklist, briefly, of the parts of him that were still living and how they were responding to the new limb. Though the socket of his hip was quite numb, it still ghosted a scream at him, and he scribbled this down in the log he attached to his medical chart. He would track his reactions to the pain for the next couple of days, and if he had to continue to numb the area with the anesthetic he’d synthesized for this, then he would.

  
Very slowly, he released one hand, then another from his work bench, first leaning his weight into his natural leg, testing the joints on the new leg by raising the knee to his chest, rolling the ankle this way and that, tapping the toes against the ground in varying patterns. When he felt satisfied, Sasori rocked gently forward and put more of his weight into the new leg.  
  
Almost immediately, the series of gears in the knee whizzed and popped their strain, and Sasori recoiled, leaning back once more against the stability of his workbench. He thought he had the hang of joints – he had been making puppets for a very long time now, and had already gone through the testing necessary to make his elbows and wrists as functional as possible – but his knee whined as he brought it up slowly to his chest.  
  
He pivoted on his heel, swinging the new limb to rest on the surface of the workbench, hiking the leg of his trouser up to see where the issue stemmed. He flicked his wrist, jerking a chakra thread to bring a fine-headed screwdriver to his hand, and flipped the goggles down from their position on his forehead, forcing his chakra into the lenses to magnify his view.  
  
His eyes darted about the joint carefully, gently prodding with the tip of the screwdriver while he flexed the knee ever-so-slightly. One of the sprockets whirred to life, spinning out of sync with its mate, simply rubbing against the fine layer of carbon fiber mesh that he had used to line the skin. Sasori sent another burst of chakra into the lenses of his goggles to magnify, delicately prodding the gear, guiding its teeth into alignment with its partner’s.  
  
Easing from the workbench, he went through his battery of exercises once more, keeping careful attention to the arrangement in his knee. All seemed to be working as expected, though he once more heard the strain when he pushed his weight forward. He scribbled a note into his chart to swap out the parts for stronger ones, but on a temporary basis these would suffice. He did not, in any particular sense, have pressing engagements that would require him to overexert the mechanics, and was content to spend the next few days testing the new limb out.  
  
With the arms it had been simpler, Sasori realized as he took several toddling steps into his workshop. Even if he had done both at once, he could have kept them secured to his body with a sling and performed basic jobs and tasks through his puppets while he became accustomed to their movements, but with legs it was quite different. Certainly, he knew in great detail the amount of pressure the human leg could take, but knowing was one thing.  
  
He completed the lap to the very opposite end of the room, at first swinging the leg like a crutch, then deliberately forcing through the uncomfortable sensation of moving a limb he couldn’t feel. Resting his weight in the opposite hip for the moment, he reached forward and tugged the length of cloth that covered the multi-paneled mirror he kept there. It was an antique, and even if he cast his memory back, Sasori could truly not say when he had acquired it – he only knew that he had always had it, as far back as childhood, when he was first learning to maneuver his fingers without being seen.  
  
He had mastered sleight of hand for his art, and he would master this too.  
  
He kept the momentum from the final step and swiveled on his heel, eyes darting about the panels, zeroing in raptorlike at the flow of his gait, at the stacking of his joints and how much weight he was placing, consciously or unconsciously, and where. This was almost a mistake – he made a smooth turn, but his body overcorrected for the lack of a limb, and he continued to swing. It was only the twitch of his fingers, attaching chakra strings to the major ball joints that allowed him the grace of settling both of his feet back upon the ground.  
  
Sasori frowned, and his three reflections frowned back. He had been prepared for some awkwardness, after his arms – there had been some stiffness, yes, and the lingering scent of spilt linseed oil reminded him that the phantom of his limbs had overpowered the replacements for a brief period of time, but surely it had not been like this. Fingers and hands were a delicate structure, and required finesse to work up to grace and skill – his legs, however, he had expected better of.  
  
He thought of his puppets, the rows upon rows of them that surrounded him in his workshop – he thought of their movements, of the jerks and rattles as they seized upon his enemies like clockwork predators, and his frown soured.  
  
They were miracles of machinery, the best that his mind and his skills and his nimble hands had to offer, but he couldn’t afford to be like them. He could not afford to be only as good as his last tool, no matter how masterful.  
  
He was, after all, an innovator.  
  
And he needed to be better.  
  
With a sigh, he swiveled on his heel once more, absently keeping the chakra strings attached to the ball joints of his knee and ankle as he slowly, deliberately made his way back across the room to his workbench. When he finally reached it, he braced himself on the balls of his palms, grimacing as a wave of fatigue washed over him, the pressure of a headache beginning to spread across his sinuses; the amphetamines must be wearing off.  
  
Pushing himself onto his stool, Sasori tugged open a drawer along the edge of the bench, rifling around for a moment before extracting two vials. One was the same dosage of amphetamines he had been using for days as he worked on the leg; the other, the anesthetic he had created for these procedures. If the amphetamines were wearing off already, then the anesthetic would not be far behind, and Sasori would not be caught unawares. Grabbing a cloth already soaked in alcohol, he swabbed a patch of living skin above his hip briefly before sticking the injections.  
  
He spent the next several days in a bit of a blur, the passage of time inscrutable to him as he pushed his body up from the stool, back across the room to the mirrors, and then again; he swapped out the gears in his knee for new ones of a more acceptable durability, then performed the circuit again, and again, and again.  
  
Finally, through his daze, Sasori felt the chakra flow down the new leg, into the new foot, and he walked, crouched, leapt. When he set his foot on the ground, his body did not recoil, did not twitch as it had, and the joint of the hip rested comfortably against the prosthetic.  
  
For the first time in weeks, Sasori smiled, content in his assessment that he would be ready to leave the workshop now. He would venture out, continuing his trial in the field, clearing out a bounty or two, and then when he returned, he would prepare more of the necessary medical components.  
  
He made a brief note in his chart, and swept a cloak over his torso. Armed with these trials, this fresh knowledge, he would be able to begin work on the other leg, he thought.


End file.
